


signals and red flags in waves

by andibeth82



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: But Laura's got a journey too, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Natasha's journey to figuring out how to deal with guilt, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 19:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11904813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: “You tried to play both sides,” Laura says calmly, leaning over and plucking at a stray thread hanging off a couch pillow. “But you publicly took a side against my husband. And now he’s not here. I don’t know where he is, but I’m assuming he’s in trouble. And you’re obviously walking away without consequences.”Natasha blinks, mouth dry and mind blank. She tries and fails to find words, and Laura lets her sit in silence for so long that it feels almost painful. Natasha squirms and tries not to let her discomfort show, because Laura staying silent like this is her saying so much without saying anything at all. She waits for some sort of gesture -- a hand squeeze, a comforting half-smile -- but nothing comes.“Well.” Laura folds her hands in her lap, the biggest show of distance that she can suggest without actually getting up and putting more space between them. “I guess you have to go figure this out, don’t you?”





	signals and red flags in waves

**Author's Note:**

> A month or so ago, I lamented "I need to write a fic about Natasha post Civil War now that we have confirmation her hair is blonde." So in a way, this was my attempt to work something into the narrative that made sense, and yes know it's probably because she's on the run but I needed to explore something a little more substantial and rooted in a little more emotion.
> 
> Perhaps more importantly than different colored hair, this is an exploration of the emotions of two important women in Clint's life and how they deal with the things that happened in CA:CW -- towards each other. There's anger, and there's misinterpreted blame and guilt, but I think there's a lot to be said about how Laura would see Natasha in that situation and how Natasha would feel after the events of the Accords and Ross. It's an important reconciliation and journey to show, on both ends, and it's something we probably won't get from the films. 
> 
> Huge thanks to intikrate88 who helped me get this from "there's 3k words and I don't know where this story is going or how it's a story" to "yeah, okay...this works."

The first person she goes to is Laura, even though she feels like she can’t face her best friend -- not when her other best friend has been taken away. Not when she feels at fault.

Not when she _knows_ she’s at fault.

She goes, though, because she knows if she doesn’t at least show her face when Clint’s face starts being shown all over the news, Laura will absolutely positively kill her, no two ways about it. Natasha was used to running the other direction when she could avoid things that directly affected the people she cared about (a funny thing, because she had no problem standing her ground against her _best fucking friend_ when it came to choosing sides) but she’d rather face Laura’s wrath in person than wallow in the guilt that would inevitably come from staying away.

“You’re hurt,” Laura observes when she finds Natasha curled up on the couch. She glances at the broken doorknob and sighs quietly, a distinct yet subtle show of annoyance that Natasha’s tuned into after all these years. “And I guess you lost your key.”

“I’m not hurt,” Natasha says quietly, even though it’s a lie. She hurts from the fight at the airport, though by all accounts she’s gotten off easy. She hurts inside, where Tony had jabbed his egotistical fingers at the softer parts of her soul and poked until they bled freely, vulnerability and anguish flowing through her cracked bones like liquid venom.

Laura doesn’t say anything, but walks into the kitchen while Natasha adjusts herself on the couch. The house is quiet, and a halo of dim light trickles from upstairs where Natasha knows the hallway light has been left on, because Lila still gets up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and Cooper’s had a hard time falling asleep since Sokovia flashed on the news. Natasha notices that the curtains angling around the bay windows in the living room are new, fabric as shiny as the light glinting off Laura’s engagement ring when she comes back with a steaming mug of tea. Natasha takes it and wraps her fingers around the ceramic while Laura sits down next to her, everything about her posture demure and careful and distanced.

“Kids?”

“Sleeping,” Laura confirms, nodding towards the stairs. “Even Nate.”

Natasha breathes out slowly, measuring her exhales. “Good.”

“My husband?”

Natasha winces. “I don’t know,” she says, and the words taste like death on her tongue. (She’s been close enough too many times, she knows how to describe it.) “All I know is that he was taken. I’m trying to find out where and how.”

Laura’s face doesn’t change, but Natasha knows her well enough -- she can see the hurt and anger simmering underneath the surface of an otherwise stoic facade. That was the thing about opening up to people: you let them see all your cracks, and in turn, you were able to see theirs. There was no black and white when it came to feelings.

“Good.”

Natasha swallows the words she wants to say. “Laura --”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Laura interrupts without raising her voice. Somehow, Natasha finds _that_ even worse than yelling. “Because I can’t have you sitting here, telling me you did everything you could, when you have nothing to show for it. I’m sorry, Natasha.”

“But I didn’t,” Natasha tells her. “That’s on me. I didn’t do everything I could...I tried to play both sides of this and...and I couldn’t. I failed.”

“You tried to play both sides,” Laura says calmly, leaning over and plucking at a stray thread hanging off a couch pillow. “But you publicly took a side against my husband. And now he’s not here. I don’t know where he is, but I’m assuming he’s in trouble. And you’re obviously walking away without consequences.”

Natasha blinks, mouth dry and mind blank. She tries and fails to find words, and Laura lets her sit in silence for so long that it feels almost painful. Natasha squirms and tries not to let her discomfort show, because Laura staying silent like this is her saying so much without saying anything at all. She waits for some sort of gesture -- a hand squeeze, a comforting half-smile -- but nothing comes.

“Well.” Laura folds her hands in her lap, the biggest show of distance that she can suggest without actually getting up and putting more space between them. “I guess you have to go figure this out, don’t you?”

The words feel like a punch in the gut, and at the same time, Natasha knows she’s earned them. She had red in her ledger, and Laura knew that -- Laura had always known that -- but this was a deeper, different kind of red. And if she’s being honest with herself, she’d known exactly what kind of red she’d be spreading when she made up her mind to play both sides of this game.

Natasha can’t tell herself otherwise. She’d always been smart and tactical. Clint liked to think he was tactical, and he was, but he was a tactical _thinker_ whereas Natasha was a tactical _soldier_.

He had told her once that she was a spy, not a soldier. She hadn’t had the heart to refute his words, not after all he’d been through -- not when he believed he knew her better than he knew himself. She had said the only response that made sense, the one that she hoped maybe he could understand, having just found out what it meant to be compromised -- what it meant to have stained hands.

_I’ve got red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out._

What an incredible mess of red she’d continued to make since that day on the helicarrier. Since she walked into the world as an agent of the Red Room. Since she tried to reform as Natasha Romanoff. Natasha looks down at her hands and then up at Laura again.

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

Laura offers her food for the road and some extra clothes, which, in Natasha’s eyes, is more than she really deserves for being here while Clint sits locked up somewhere for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

She doesn’t ask where she’s going, and Natasha doesn’t expect her to. Far from it being the first time she’s ran and hid and disappeared, this was Natasha leaving because she needed to figure out how the hell to process everything that happened. This was also Laura essentially telling her _you’re not welcome in this house unless you can own up to your mistakes. Go wherever you need to go in order to figure out how to handle this. But don’t come back until you can sit here and tell me that you knew you were in the wrong in this situation._

She also needs to hide.

_T’Challa told Ross what you did, so…_

She hadn’t told Laura that part. She had weighed her options about coming to the farm, wondering if anyone would follow her and if doing so would put the family in danger. In the end, she felt physically ill at the thought of Laura finding out what happened to Clint from the news -- or worse, from a well-meaning agent working on Ross’ dime -- and decided to throw caution to the wind when it came to being followed.

She had every intention of telling Laura about her potential danger when she walked in the door, but it was one of the many things she failed to figure out how to articulate after Laura’s cold welcome. Somehow, she didn’t think telling her that she was potentially in danger would earn her brownie points, but she also knows that _not_ saying anything isn’t good, either. At least she could work on some security measures away from the farm, make a few phone calls. And Laura had enough experience with this type of life to know how to handle anything suspicious, especially with Clint off the grid.

“Don’t stay away too long,” Laura says as she walks Natasha to the door. “It gets cold here at night, when the wolves come out.”

There were no wolves, Natasha knew. But Laura had been saying the same thing to her for years, ever since she started coming to the farm as someone who was more than Clint’s partner. It was a code that they used with each other; it was Laura letting Natasha know that she always had a home, that she could always come back, that she was wanted.

That she was loved.

Natasha swallows and puts her hand on the doorknob, the cold metal chilling her skin.

“I know. Even wolves need to come in from the cold, sometimes.”

 

***

 

Laura wasn’t made for single motherhood, but she’s made it work.

Correction: Laura never _knew_ she was made for single motherhood, but she’s pretty damn good at it.

When they first started dating, Clint would be in awe that she could cook dinner and run errands and know exactly what time the washing machine was going off so she could switch the clothes into the dryer. Clint was a competent SHIELD agent and a competent father, but Laura always had him beat when it came to domestic responsibility. Always. And that hadn’t changed just because petty jobs to make money turned into SHIELD, and SHIELD turned into the Avengers, and the Avengers turned into Sokovia and Hydra and Ultron and adopting young orphans.

Still, he would tell her all the time that he married a superhero, and that he doesn’t know how he fell into getting so lucky, but he wouldn’t change a goddamn minute.

Laura would laugh, her stomach and heart swelling with emotion, and she would kiss him on the lips, because she felt the same way -- not that she was a superhero, but she wouldn’t change a goddamn minute, either.

When Cooper was born, Laura watched as Clint rolled through the motions of first-time fatherhood, from being overly conscious of her pregnancy (did she really want the mint chocolate chip sorbet or did she want the cookies and cream from Friendly’s, because ‘ice cream’ meant two different things when she was hormonal) to giving up conference calls just so he could drive her to neo-natal appointments and birthing classes. Friends who didn’t know the real secrets behind the curtain would marvel at the dedicated husband who seemed calm and collected and always had a smile on his face.

(She would never tell them how she found him hiding in the closet, rocking back and forth, because Cooper was crying _again_ and he wouldn’t stop and he was so frustrated that he had almost lashed out, and he couldn’t become his father, not now, not here.)

When Lila was born, it was Clint struggling between father and agent, between home and New York, between code words and baby talk. He made it home for all the important things -- the appointments, the baby shower, the labor and the delivery -- but it wasn’t a full shared partnership the way it had been with two, or even with three.

And Laura never faltered. She cooked breakfast and grocery shopped and changed diapers while children peed on her hands; she drove carpool and rocked one baby to sleep right before going downstairs to make pre-school lunch, and then she would finish sewing Cooper’s Halloween costume until the early morning prairie lights poked at her eyes, reminding her that she could get at least an hour of sleep before Lila inevitably woke up.

Except, that was also usually the hour Cint would decide to call from Bogota or Budapest or Belize or some foreign country -- she knew her geography, she wasn’t an idiot, but they all blended together after awhile -- apologizing for the time difference with a scratchy voice and apologetic tone. Laura knew she couldn’t _not_ talk to him, and she obviously _wanted_ to talk to him, and so she would lie in bed watching the baby monitor while trying to pay attention to stories from the road.

And then when she hung up the phone, “be safes” in place of “I love yous” because they could never be that transparent over unsecured lines, she would close her eyes for ten minutes, get up at Lila’s first wail, and do it all over again.

When Nate was born, Clint swore to hell and high water that this was it. This was the end, this was where he was supposed to be. No more running around, no more worrying about missing a moment of his child’s early life. No more leaving in the middle of the night because of an emergency, no more teetering between full-time dad and workaholic archer. “I’ll even get an Iowa driver’s license,” he joked over bacon, to prove his commitment.

“This is done,” he would say, waving his hands around and referring to the messy house, the toys strewn all over the floor and the dishes piled in the sink and the desk that was once pristine and uncluttered, now overflowing with bills and permission slips and credit card receipts and children’s drawings. Laura would look at him, blueberry yogurt smeared across his face, bags under his eyes, and without asking him to clarify, she knew what he meant.

_This is done. Your job as a single mother is done. We’re doing this together again, and I’m not going anywhere. For Christ’s sake, I almost died out there, Laura. I don’t want that to happen again when we have this life._

Of course, he couldn’t have foreseen the Accords, or Steve calling and telling him he needed help and he had to go get Wanda. That’s what he told her when he woke her up at two in the morning, whispering so he didn’t wake their kids. “But it’ll be a quick trip,” he had promised, running his fingers through her hair in that comforting way that always made her melt, no matter how tired or angry she was. “Besides, Nat will be there to get my back. And I’ll be home before you know it. I’m done, remember?”

(Laura had wanted to argue that retired people didn’t just pick up and go back to work with an hour’s notice, leaving their kids behind, but she knew it wasn’t going to do any good to say that.)

So Laura was doing single motherhood again, and it was a test because this time it wasn’t one or two kids, but three. And still, she wasn’t worried, because Clint always came home. He always came home and that was when he was working. Now he was retired, so of _course_ he would come home. And as usual, Natasha would be there to have his back, to make sure he walked through the door safe and sound.

Except Natasha didn’t have his back, because Natasha wasn’t there. Or if she was, she didn’t do what she was supposed to do. She didn’t protect him. She chose to stand against him, and chose to oppose him, and she didn’t keep him safe.

Laura’s not sure how long it’s going to take to forgive her for that.

 

***

 

It only takes Natasha two hours to realize she doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go.

The farm was always the place she would run to, if she wanted to get away. And until she couldn’t run there, she hadn’t realized how much she took it for granted. She stands at the edge of the road, a mile from the house, trying to convince herself not to turn back. She _could_ turn back -- she could walk through the door, apologize profusely, spread out a plan for rescuing Clint and take responsibility for her actions. That’s what Laura wanted, after all. That’s what would earn her love back, after all these years.

She _could_ do that, if she felt like that was anything she deserved. As it is, the sandwiches Laura made her are burning a hole in her backpack, a stark reminder of a kindness that shouldn’t have even been offered.

Laura was always like that, though. Laura was kind and understanding and would never turn anyone away, even if she was angry at them. It was what made her such a match for Clint; she could see through his rash “need to help everyone, need to do good” urges and understand why her husband did things like bringing a stray assassin in from the cold without telling his bosses.

Laura was responsible, caring, and always gave more than she got, even from her goddamn husband, who gave her the world -- when he wasn’t branded as a terrorist, at least. Which is why it hurts that Laura could still be kind even when she was visibly furious, because no one should be able to walk that fine line so well.

Natasha pivots and walks west, towards where an old railway line cuts through the meadows and rolling Iowa hills. She checks her watch and waits; hours and days and months at the farm have been embroidered into her skin and there are certain things she knows like the back of her hand, like the exact time the freight train will appear or the exact moment the doorbell will ring with the daily mail or the exact time she’ll start to smell burning wood from the house next door when they start their nightly fire.

When the first set of headlights appear in the distance, Natasha cautiously positions herself, and waits until the train has slowed down enough to pass through the crossing. She counts the cars -- one, two, three -- takes a running leap and swings herself onto the fourth with all the ease of someone who has been trained to survive at the drop of a hat. She lands nimbly on the lip of the car door, holding tight to the handle, and gets her footing before sliding the door open enough so that she can wiggle inside, settling onto the dank floor. When she breathes in, she inhales a heaviness that she can’t seem to exhale.

The train jerks back and forth as it rolls on, and Natasha gropes in the dark, until her hand closes around the bulky corner of a wooden box. She finagles the top open with only a few splinters and cuts, and almost laughs out of hysteria and exhaustion when she realizes what’s inside, recognizing the sound of lightly clinking glass.

Clint had taken her to the vineyards on their first date, only it wasn’t really a date, because Clint was married to Laura. She hadn’t known about his wife yet, though -- he hadn’t given up that part of himself. All she knew was that he was her partner, that he was someone that didn’t throw her out or turn her in when she tried to strangle him or cut his arm and caused him to end up in Medical for three days under supervision.

They were supposed to leave from one job immediately for another, but they had finished early, and Clint had convinced her to blow off reports and responsibility. Natasha hadn’t really argued, because she had already learned Clint was a goddamn stubborn asshole when it came to making her do shit and there was something about him that made her unable to say no to his endearing grin and annoyingly pleading eyes.

They had wine tasted at a place in Napa Valley. Four glasses in had Clint going into sharp detail about Bordeaux Blends and how the combination of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot was a different grape flavor than something like Pinot Noir; later that night, they had cuddled together, tucked into one another’s arms, Natasha snuggled into the curve of his elbow, eyes closing as his breath faintly and comfortably blew in regular intervals over her skin.

She found out about Laura the next day. She suspects it’s because Clint felt guilty about being that intimate, and she knew why he had made the decision to tell her -- she understood how he could be married, even -- but it had been a let-down she wasn’t prepared for.

“It doesn’t change the fact that it was a date,” Clint had told her, still hazy from the wine because they had brought at least four bottles back home with them. His lips were as red as her hair and she liked how they looked, so she hadn’t forced him to go wash his face.

“Sure,” she had agreed perfunctorily. Clint had grabbed her fingers, entwining them in a steel grip.

“Natasha, no. It’s _still_ our first date. Okay?”

She suspects in that moment he had been looking for validation, the alcohol in his system heightening his self-conscious fears to double what they usually were, worried that all of this -- the missions, the Medical visits, the stitches, the secrets -- would be blown to kingdom come with the reveal of the fact he couldn’t kiss her or have sex with her or be with her in the way that she wouldn’t admit to anyone else she wanted.

“Okay,” and then because it was true and she figured he was drunk anyway, “I love you.”

Red lips had parted in surprise, forming a small “o” between the moment of response and Clint’s brain presumably trying to figure out how what to say.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Natasha had said, rolling her eyes and shoving him playfully. “Just say you love me too. I’m not going to tell your wife.”

The ice had been broken, then. Clint had laughed, and Natasha had laughed, and that night they had cuddled again and Natasha had felt lighter than she had in years, warm and wanted. She had felt in that moment there was nothing they could ever do to each other that would compromise their relationship, red and all.

What a naive fool she had been. Even more naive than thinking she could reform and have people think she was more than a slippery, wavering agent of the law who couldn’t be trusted to make the right decisions. Who could stand across from her partner and believe that she chose the right side because she wanted to keep people she cared about together.

Natasha leans back against open box, one hand still gripping a wine bottle. She sleeps until she doesn’t feel tired anymore, then hops off the train when it slows at the next crossing. She leaves the wine behind.

 

***

 

Laura’s proud of single motherhood, but sometimes, it bites her in the ass.

Sure, she’s had her fair share of missteps over the years -- forgetting brownies for the bake sale, neglecting to realize Cooper needed three days of underwear for his camping trip and not two; once she even spaced on picking Lila up from dance practice because she lost track of time -- but rarely has there been something so frustrating about trying to be everywhere at once that’s made her want to smash her fist into the wall, the way Clint did when they fought after they were first married and he told her he was thinking of going off to SHIELD.

Rarely.

New York was one -- a big one. She only kicks herself for that because she knew when the reports started breaking that she should be more vigilant, but then Lila had tripped over one of Cooper’s toy trucks and banged her knee on the last stair step and couldn’t stop crying, and Laura’s attention had been diverted while trying to bandage and soothe her daughter’s injuries. So she hadn’t been paying attention to what Cooper was watching until she carried her daughter back downstairs, mind completely focused on promises of ice cream and cookies, and was caught off guard by Cooper’s attention to the television.

She’d caught the tail end of what was being shown -- the innards of a battle, bodies and alien carcasses strewn over the streets and people running for their lives -- and there, right in the center of it all, flashes of blue and white and red, red hair and shining, silver arrows.

Laura had turned the television off without so much as a look in Cooper’s direction; to be fair, her son seemed to realize he shouldn’t have been paying attention to something so visceral (even if it was breaking into all the cartoons and television shows) and had silently removed himself from the couch to play with Legos.

Cooper had never talked about what he saw. That night, Laura hadn’t slept, mind and ears awake and alert for any signs of nightmares or bathroom breaks, but Cooper had passed his first introduction to trauma with flying colors.

New York was one, and Laura hoped to god there wouldn’t be any more.

She’s actually proud of herself today, because she’s managed to cook a new loaf of banana bread and remember Nate’s pediatrician appointment, and she’d even gotten home well before Cooper and Lila had finished school which meant she could have snacks ready for them.

She’s also managed not to think about how blindingly angry she is at both Natasha and Clint. Clint, well, she could easily be angry at him -- it was a one-sided argument, after all. Laura doesn’t really know what’s happened, just that he’s not coming home. It was easy to funnel that into frustration and vitriol, she had been doing it for years while he was at SHIELD. And this time, he had taken it too fucking far with springing out of retirement to help Wanda and Cap.

But Natasha was a different story. Natasha had known better. Natasha had always stepped cautiously around their marriage as if she was afraid that pressing too hard on one already-tenuous fracture would ruin everything. And if there’s one thing Laura’s been firmly proud of, it was allowing Natasha to feel comfortable about stepping too hard, shattering that invisible wall that had existed between her and Clint and her and Laura; she had watched Natasha poke holes until she could break through, and she had watched as she had fallen through the opening with relief, body sagging and arms wrapping around Clint in a hug because she could finally stop holding back.

“I didn’t think I’d done enough to earn this,” Natasha had said uncertainly that same night. Laura had been mixing three large cups of Tito’s vodka with seltzer, and forced herself not to let one cup overflow as she tried to figure out how to respond.

“You don’t earn love, Nat.”

Laura reaches for a sponge to wash the mixing bowl, and warm water splashes onto her arms. Natasha had barely contacted Laura during the Battle of New York; it was only later that she learned just how far she had gone to save Clint. How she had almost died under the Hulk’s crushing hand, how Clint had almost killed her in his brainwashed state, how she knew that she was either going to win or die by her own doing, but she didn’t care because she had one goal and that was saving him.

How could someone who fought _so much_ for a home stand on the other side of someone she claimed to love and not do everything she could to bring him back to his family?

Laura’s torn from her thoughts by the blasting sound of the television. Far be it for her to chastise her kids about screen privileges when she’s been scatterbrained herself, she doesn’t bother to worry about what they’re watching, and by the time she walks into the living room twenty minutes later, she realizes Cooper has channel surfed off cartoons and has also abandoned the television. The news has broken in, and Lila is sitting on the couch lazily staring as a newscaster looks solemnly into the camera, all business and a little bit of sorrow.

_“Just moments ago, we learned that this is where seventeen-year-old Kim Peters was kidnapped when she was walking home from a concert late last night. Friends say Peters was supposed to leave right after the concert was over, but instead, she tagged along with a few friends that she had just met. It was the last time she was seen.”_

Laura glances at the television and shuts it off decisively before the story can go any further.

“Alright, monsters. That’s enough screen time for tonight. Dinner.”

“Ugh,” Cooper mutters, dragging himself away from his trucks as Lila rolls off the couch in an exaggerated show of despair.

“I don’t want _green_ things.”

“You will eat your green things or you won’t get a book tonight,” Laura replies, pointing towards the table, because she’s had it with trying to be swayed. “Even your brother likes his green things.”

“Kwaf!” Nate adds, green goo dripping out of his tiny mouth and down the shirt that stretches over his chubby baby belly.

“Daddy always eats my green things for me,” Lila protests as she climbs into her chair, while Laura presses her lips together and tries to stop very inappropriate things from coming out of her mouth.

Sometime later -- much, much later -- when the house is quiet and even Nate is snoring, stretched out on his back in his crib, Laura is attempting some self-care in the form of bourbon and knitting. She’s startled out of her concentration, one pull away from completing another sleeve of a sweater, when she notices a tiny shadow casting itself over her space.

Laura looks up and when she sees Lila’s face, she knows instantly that something’s wrong. If there’s one thing Laura’s perfected during her years of parenting (single parenting aside), it’s being able to tell at a moment’s notice when something is wrong with her children. And this isn’t the patented “monster in the closet” nightmare, but it’s not a “something’s chasing me and I can’t sleep” nightmare, either.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

Lila looks down at her feet and wraps small arms around her body. “I was scareded.”

Laura puts her needle down and carefully moves her knitting project out of the way. “What do we do when we get scared?” she asks softly.

Lila’s lip trembles. “Talk to mommy and daddy.”

Laura nods, trying not to feel upset that Clint’s not here. It’s certainly not the first time Lila had gone looking for comfort from her parents and only found one available. “Tell mommy why you’re scared,” she continues in a gentle voice.

Lila’s breaths start coming out a little faster. “That thingy on the news,” she says quietly, a hiccuping sob hidden in her voice. “Is that what happened to daddy? Was he alone and now he’s not home?”

Laura swallows hard, knives piercing her throat. “Come here,” she says, holding her arm out. Lila walks forward and then climbs into her mother’s lap, and Laura hugs her tightly, legs kicking out against the worn fabric.

“That girl just found trouble in the wrong place, that’s all.”

“So like daddy,” Lila says sadly, her voice muffled in Laura’s shirt. Laura suddenly feels like someone has poured a vat of acid over her; everything prickles and hurts and her skin is hot and she can’t quite breathe.

“Yeah,” she confirms, hugging her daughter more tightly, because she doesn’t know how else to cope right now, and she needs something to hold onto, and both people who she would normally turn to aren’t here. “Like daddy.”

 

***

 

After her jaunt on the good old railroad, Natasha continues west.

She rents a car with leftover pocket money, sweet talks the sleepy teenaged guy at the counter into letting her put the rest of the deposit on a stolen credit card, then cuts up the card while she’s sitting in the driver’s seat. She drives until she finds a large Target and picks up additional clothes and toiletries and food just in case, and tries not to think about Laura while she shops, throwing items into her cart with indifference.

Laura loved Target, but more than that, shopping trips to buy things for Clint and the kids were a ritual that Natasha always associated with the farm. She wonders if Clint will ever be able to do something like shop in Target again, trailing after his wife in denim cut-offs that showed all his scars and a t-shirt that smelled of baby food and month-old detergent.

She suddenly realizes she’s going to be embarrassingly sick, and abandons her cart in the home goods aisle before rushing into the bathroom to throw up.

By the time she gets back on the road, it’s late afternoon, and by the time she realizes she needs to stop (because she’s many things, but even she’s not superhuman), she doesn’t really care that her destination is a seedy dive bar. She climbs exhaustedly onto the bar stool, noting how it’s not at all crowded -- good, she could blend in and not worry someone was coming to lynch her -- and orders a gin and tonic.

That’s when her phone rings.

She’s taken off guard at first, her heart leaping into her throat as she realizes she’s waiting for Laura to call. But the number that’s calling her isn’t a number she recognizes, and it’s definitely not the farm. It’s a blocked No Caller ID. She frowns, debating her life choices, and carefully hits the button.

“Yes.”

“Is that a standard greeting, or are you just happy to hear from me?”

Natasha exhales loudly, pushing back from the barstool. “Depends. You still fucking around in Siberia?”

“You still fucking around under the radar?”

Natasha grinds her teeth together and then sips more of her drink. “Depends.”

Steve snorts on the other end of the line. “Nice, Nat. Kind of a change from the girl who flew halfway around the world just to be with me at a funeral so I wouldn’t be alone.”

His words aren’t as bad as Tony’s, by any means, and not even as bad as Laura’s. But they still sting, in the way that words can sting when someone knows all of your layers and tells, when you’ve peeled yourself back so much that everything is wet and mushy and nothing is hard and granite anymore.

“Did you call me just to make sure I’m not dead?”

“Well, yes and no. I mostly called to see if you threw away your phone. But I guess you didn’t.”

Natasha bites her lip, hating everything about this conversation. “You know why I didn’t.” She had wanted so badly to just disappear, to not worry or care, but she couldn’t do it. Not when Laura was alone because of something she was, in part, responsible for. She needed to offer that olive branch to herself, to Laura, even if Laura never wanted to talk to her again.

“I guess I did,” Steve says. He waits a moment and then sighs into the phone. “I’m doing recon work on The Raft. I’m getting them out. Come with me.”

Natasha tries to reconcile what Steve is asking with the sudden urge to bolt, and forces herself to stay still. She drinks more.

“No.”

“Natasha --”

“It’s not my call. And I’m not right for the job.”

“Bullshit,” Steve counters. “You’re a better agent than I am. I can knock down doors, but you’re the one who can actually get me in there.”

“I guarantee you’ve learned a lot about stealth since we were partnered,” Natasha responds levelly. She’s aware she’s behaving in part like a petty child, but she’s also trying to keep this part of her as close to the vest as possible. Steve had already been exposed to too much. She couldn’t give him any more. Not yet.

“You know that’s not an excuse.”

“Call it what you want,” Natasha responds. “I’m not coming with you. I’m figuring this out on my own.”

“Yeah, well.” She can practically see his eye roll in her mind. “Not doing such a great job with that, are you?”

 _Not doing such a great job with a lot of things_ , Natasha thinks grimly. “I make my own decisions and I’m making my own decision now,” she tells him. “Good luck with Ross.”

She hangs up and only feels mildly bad, especially when he doesn’t immediately call her back to bitch at her about her response -- something he would have done until recently, a reminder of how close they had gotten with each other after Hydra. She had known Tony longer than she had known anyone else on the team (and Clint didn’t count, he never counted) but she considered Steve’s level of trust on the same wavelength as someone who she watched spiral down a rabbit hole years ago.

“Fuck,” she mutters. Clint was in some prison somewhere, and Laura was home with three kids and a defunct father and an even more defunct best friend, and everyone else she knew was on the fringes of social exclusion. It was, in some ways, worse than the isolation she’d felt when she was in the Red Room, and when she first came to SHIELD.

When Natasha leaves the bar, she’s slightly tipsy, and she realizes it’s probably not the best idea to drive in that state. So she wanders down the dark street, and when she comes across a small drugstore, she finds herself standing in the hair products aisle, dumbly staring down row after row of boxes promising every color from red and blonde to black to brown.

It was so simple for everyone else to be someone new. All they had to do was spend twenty dollars on a bottle of hair dye. No one else needed a passport, a new identity, and different clothes. She plucks out a box before she realizes what she’s doing, and suddenly, she doesn’t feel so tipsy anymore. It’s almost as if she’s been fueled by the desire to change and to hide -- something she had to do anyway -- and she walks quickly back to the car, driving again until she finds a motel a few hours away.

“I need to call in a favor,” she says when Tony picks up the phone after three rings. She doesn’t bother to say hello. She’s surprised he’s picked up at all, considering the circumstances they had left themselves in, but at this point, she gives less shits than usual.

“Not a fair play, Romanoff.”

Natasha ignores his tone. “Please, Tony. Just shut up and listen, okay? I need you to do something for me.”

“For you, or for someone else?”

Natasha stares at the walls of the hotel, the sad hanging curtains and pure white sheets of the hotel bed reminding her of the depth of her isolation. “Both.”

Tony sighs overdramatically, and then there’s the sound of a pencil hitting the floor. Natasha supposes it must have fallen from his fingers, and she imagines him hunched over, hands on his eyes, gaze turned towards the floor.

“Fine. What?”

Natasha takes a moment to find her authoritative voice, the one devoid of any emotion.

“I need you to keep Barton’s family safe. Extra security, check-ins, anything you can do to make sure that they’re not in danger. I’m not going to be able to go back to the farm for awhile, so I can’t do much from where I am.”

“And where is that?”

“None of your business right now.”

Tony’s silent on the other end of the line, and Natasha’s hands find the bedspread. She twists it between her fingers tensely. “ _Tony_.”

“Alright,” Tony says, more easily than she expects. “I’ll do it. Consider it payback for Vanko.”

Natasha’s lips curl into a sardonic smile. “Vanko. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“Why do you think I said I consider it payback?” Tony asks. “Look, don’t worry, okay? I’ll take care of it.”

Natasha lets the air out of her body and realizes she’s been too tense for too long. “Thank you.”

“Hey, Nat?”

She’d been about to hang up, finger poised over the red button on the cell phone, and stops at his words. “Yeah?”

“You said you weren’t going to be back at the farm for awhile. And if I had something to do with that, I’m sorry. Rhodey almost died and my judgement was clouded, and --”

“It’s not an excuse,” Natasha decides, cutting him off firmly, because it’s not. Clint almost died once, too, and she’d never said those types of things. “But I do appreciate the apology.”

Tony clears his throat. “Hey, you know, if you ever get tired of running, I’ve got a place for you back here. I’ve even got a nice compensation package. Could be a good way to start over, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

The thing is, Natasha realizes she’s considering it. She realizes when her hands stop clutching the covers, when her mouth doesn’t immediately spit out the word “no,” when her gut clenches in a feeling of desperation. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? To start over? Erase the red by walking into a group that only knew her as the Black Widow and showing them that she could be someone different, on her own terms, and in her own way?

A place to call her own that wasn’t the farm, which Natasha hasn’t had since SHIELD fell and since she more or less adopted Clint’s house as her permanent mainstay in the wake of having to become transient. Somewhere she could feel settled, and focused…

Except she couldn’t stay focused. She would dream of Clint -- she would dream of Laura. Clint would never come back to the facility unless he was dragged there. Laura would never leave the farm. Natasha would still be a traitor to the people she cared about. It would just be another way of running and hiding, albeit a more stable one.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that right now,” she says slowly.

“Up to you,” Tony replies. “Think about it. Door’s always open. Not like I’m gonna find someone else to do this with me who’s as good as you, anyway.”

She smiles and hangs up, then sits on the bed for another moment before picking up the drugstore bag. She dyes her hair in the bathroom, squeezing yellow goo onto red strands, and when she shakes out her hair after washing it, ripping the towel off her head, she stares in the mirror with a little bit of morbid fascination.

It’s a good change. She hasn’t been blonde, since, fuck -- 1998? The day she broke from the Red Room? Somehow, it’s all blurred together over the years.

That night, she cuts off the dead and straggling ends and leaves some hair in a clump on the bathroom floor. She makes a passport in the shitty hotel room, just in case, and as she pastes someone else’s body onto her newly blonde head, she wonders if she’ll ever feel like herself again.

 

***

 

It hits Laura on the fifth day of Natasha’s absence and the fifteenth day of Clint’s absence -- she feels abandoned.

It’s not that she’s not used to either of them going off and disappearing for large stretches of time. For Natasha, for someone who wasn’t technically a full-blown family member, it was even more common for her to be gone for days or weeks at a time. And even though Clint had gotten better about making sure he didn’t stay away too long, Laura always felt some sort of connection and comfort. Even if something happened, it was routine. It was their life. There was security and there were codes, and there were things she knew in advance, and even if she didn’t, there was someone who stepped in and told her the details.

But this is different.

They’re not just out of range. Clint is somewhere bad -- captured, alone, maybe in trouble -- Laura doesn’t know and part of her doesn’t want to know. Natasha is off the grid -- running, hiding, maybe in trouble -- Laura knows she’s responsible for that part of the deal, because she had all but forced Natasha from the house thanks to her anger and hurt, and she knows that the real reason Clint had left home was to help Wanda, and that was fine, everything was _fine_ \--

But he had taken it way too fucking far. And Natasha wasn’t on his side when it mattered. She had even admitted it. And every promise that Laura’s ever held close to the vest now seems like it holds no meaning, and this is beyond what she’s used to handling in a semi-long distance relationship and classified life.

So, yeah. Laura feels abandoned, and she’s pretty sure she has every right to.

Cooper is at school and Lila’s playing outside and Laura is in the middle of feeding Nathaniel when the phone rings. It’s the main line, so she idly picks it up without thinking.

“Laura.”

Laura freezes, half a spoonful of strawberry goo still sitting in Nate’s mouth. She only unfreezes because the baby starts sucking too hard and she has to pull her hand away.

“How...oh my god,” she says, her voice swollen, and then the tears start before she can control them. She switches the phone to speaker so she has her hands free. “Are you -- are you hurt? Please tell me you’re okay, please --”

“I’m okay,” Clint responds, though his voice sounds tired and he sounds uncertain. “How are you?”

She figures if he’s asking then she doesn’t have to worry about secure lines or where he’s calling from, so she decides to be honest.

“I’ve been better.”

He laughs quietly over the phone, a harsh, rough sound. “Look, I don’t know how much time I have. But I needed to call. How are the kids?”

“They’re fine,” Laura tells him, and it’s mostly the truth -- mostly. They were never going to miss their father, and Laura was never going to pretend it didn’t hurt.

“Mee mah ba!” Nate blurts out, looking at his mom with a quizzical, concerned face that Laura realizes means _where did my food go?_

Clint exhales loudly. “Good.”

Laura gets up and paces the room, tears still wet on her face. “What happened? Where were you?”

Clint hesitates. “It’s a long story. Is Natasha there?”

Laura shakes her head before remembering this isn’t FaceTime, and he can’t see her. “No. She…” Laura realizes she can’t admit to Clint how much of a role she’s played in Natasha not being here. “She’s not.” Her brow furrows, and for a moment, she forgets their emotional phone call, because something doesn’t add up. “She’s not with you?”

“No,” Clint says, and there’s a dangerous tremor in his voice that Laura realizes means he knows something’s not right, but he hasn’t figured it out. “We got out of the place we were taken, but she didn’t come help us. Cap did.”

Laura swallows. She hates that she doesn’t know anymore whether Natasha’s absence is due to running, or because she really is done being there for Laura, for Clint, for the family she once pledged she would always protect.

“Laura,” and his voice is softer, more gentle. “I needed to call you so you knew I was okay. But I can’t come home.”

“Why?” she asks in a voice more broken than she feels comfortable with. “And don’t fucking tell me it’s a long story. You’re not on an unsecured line, I can tell from the questions you’ve been asking.”

She envisions the Clint she knows -- running his fingers nervously through overgrown hair, creases between his eyes, frown lines prominent around his mouth.

“ _Why_?”

“Because it’s not safe,” he says finally. “I gotta put some distance between you and this and...this. Everything that’s happened. But I _will_ come home, you know that. I love you.”

She does know that, or at least, she wants to know that. She’s still in a state of feeling abandoned, but it’s not a conversation she’s about to have over the phone, not when she’s relieved and thankful and also emotionally compromised. Not when this is the first time she’s been able to talk to Clint since he stepped out the door with an apologetic look in his eye, the one that she could read like the back of her hand.

_I can’t stop. I can’t give it up. I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me._

“Will you still be able to call?”

“As much as I can,” Clint promises. “Tell the kids I love them, okay?”

“I will,” Laura says softly, sinking into the kitchen chair. She looks at Nate, and her eyes brim with tears again. “I love you.”

“And I love you,” he responds quietly, before hanging up. The house is suddenly quiet again, save for the clattering of Nate’s spoon against his high chair and his hands rattling the plastic tray in amusement.

She closes her eyes, and counts to ten slowly. Then she gets up, washes her hands, continues feeding her son, and continues to go about her day.

 

***

 

There’s an old hideout that she had used back in her assassin days, a place in Bormida. It’s a municipal house whose outside looks like it’s seen better days, overlooking a stretch of pavement and some green hills.

It’s comfortable enough for her to huddle in, plus, the town has a dwindling population of 400, which means that no tourists will go snooping around and that she doesn't have to worry about hiding in the open. She also feels safer here: she knows the ins and outs, knows all the secret locks and places she could be attacked. Most importantly, it’s a place that existed at a time in her life when there was no Clint, no Laura, and no quiet farm.

It’s familiar.

Natasha stays long enough to feel like she can be a little bit more permanent than boxcars and dive bars and hotels, putting some new curtains up in the kitchen, changing some of the bedding, and stocking the kitchen. She changes some of the older locks and hides her burner in a drawer because out of sight, out of mind is so entirely childish but it’s something that still works for her.

Every passing day, she tries not to think about Clint and worried she is about Laura. She couldn’t see them yet. She couldn’t go to them yet. Not when she was still considered a traitor by everyone who she ever tried to gain trust from. Ironically, Steve seemed to be the only person willing to give her the benefit of the doubt after all of this, and she doesn’t even feel like she deserves _that_.

Two weeks after she’s settled in, she’s out buying groceries and more coffee, and when she comes back, her eagle eyes notice a smeared fingerprint on the brass knob of the front door. She frowns, carefully puts her groceries down, and removes a throwing knife from her boots. Keeping her gait quiet, she opens the door slowly and soundlessly, stepping into the room and letting her knife fly in the direction of where she’s glimpsed the briefest hint of movement.

“ _Ow_ , fucking _christ_!”

Natasha drops the second knife she’s pulled when Clint cries out; she’s shaking but for an entirely different reason than she thought she’d be shaking. In that moment, she realizes just how unhinged she’s felt since everything happened and how much she’s been letting it seep into her mentality.

“What the hell?”

“What the _hell_?”

He looks like shit, she’ll give him that much. He’s still bruised and full of cuts from the airport fight; a large messy stitch stretches across his forehead. As he moves out of the shadows, she realizes her knife has left a mark; he’s bleeding and holding his upper arm with his fingers wrapped tightly around a long gash.

“Need me to stitch that up?”

Clint glares at her. “That’s how you greet me? After all this time?”

“Well, I saw you for forty seconds while we were fighting --”

“Play fighting,” Clint interrupts with a small smile that makes Natasha want to scream.

“I could leave you to bleed out, you know.”

“You could,” Clint counters. “But you won’t.”

Natasha sighs, because as angry as she is about everything, she really doesn’t want to argue.

“Come here, asshole.”

Clint smiles again, this time a little more genuinely, and sits down on the small couch. Natasha rummages around underneath the sink until she produces a small first aid kit.

“Out of all the safehouses in all the world, you end up back here.”

“What, did you go down a list or something?” she asks as she sits down next to him.

“Gotta say, it was a short list.” He gives her a pointed look as she takes out a few bandages, and she knows what he means without having to ask -- and okay, maybe she was transparent after all. This was a safehouse before Clint and Laura, but it was also the only one Clint knew about. And it made sense that if he was going to be smart enough to think of places she would go that were removed from their life, he would start at the only one he’s aware exists.

“How are you?” she asks quietly as she presses the bandages against his wound, soaking up blood. Up close, he looks even worse than he had from a distance -- pale and tired, bags underneath his eyes and sunken-in cheeks.

“Been better,” he replies evasively. “Secret underwater prisons aren’t really my thing. But I got off easy, for the most part. Wanda...they really fucked her up.”

Natasha blinks, trying to keep her emotions in check. “Ross?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, his voice taking on a dangerous tone. “Kept her in a straitjacket, locked her up...I didn’t even know where she was until we got out. At least we had the courtesy to move around and eat disgusting pieces of bread. She couldn’t even stand. Fucking Ross…I hate him as much as the guy who invented Legos. Pointy ass motherfuckers.”

Natasha laughs as she inspects his injury; the knife had done enough damage to cause a good amount of bleeding but it wasn’t as deep a cut as she had initially thought. She takes out a needle and thread and starts sterilizing, trying not to pay attention to the fact that Clint’s staring at her in an unnerving fashion, like he’s seeing her for the first time as if they haven’t been sitting next to each other for ten minutes.

“What?”

“You’re...you’re blonde.”

“Is that a problem?” Natasha asks icily. “You’ve seen me with a lot different hair colors over the years. It’s not like I’ve never been blonde.”

“Yeah, but it’s permanent, isn’t it? I can tell by the color.”

Natasha scoffs. “Yeah, so what?”

“So, it’s never been permanent,” Clint asserts, nodding at her as she starts to stitch. He winces as the needle hits his skin. “We’ve done this all our lives, Nat. Washout dye jobs, wigs...but you’ve always gone back to red. _Always_. This is something different.”

He’s calling her out and she hates it. What’s worse, she knows he can tell he’s pricked a hole in her thick skin.

“So what?”

Clint shakes his head. “You wanna pretend you’re a saint, Nat? Fine. But we’ve _all_ got red and we’re never going to be able to wash it out. What’s next, a back tattoo or some new ink to make sure you can hide from the world?”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Natasha responds, even though she knows it is. She knows her argument is going to fail, but damned if she’s going to let him see her fall apart so easily.

“I think it is,” Clint retorts. “And if you think that by suddenly disappearing and dying your hair or pretending you don’t exist anymore makes you pure and redeemed, then you might as well retire to the damn country.”

“That’s rich, coming from someone who was _raised_ in the country,” Natasha returns scathingly as she finishes up his stitches, pieces of gauze falling to the floor. “Who also has blood on their hands.”

She’s sure he’s going to hit her, then. Natasha can count on the fingers of one hand the times that her and Clint have actually hit each other out of pure anger and not because of sparring or something like Loki. She knows the deep underbelly of anger he has, has always had, the scars from his upbringing that he struggled to push down every day because he couldn’t let violence get the best of him, especially now that he had a wife and kids. He once swore to her that he wouldn’t ever treat her like that, even if she did, because Red Room memories were hard to overcome.

But she also knows she’s poked that underbelly a little too hard, judging from the way his eyes are burning. So she’s not really surprised when his good arm rises, and Natasha doesn’t even blink when his hand comes crashing down -- not on her face, as she had suspected, but on the crappy first aid kit sitting on the bed. The metal box snaps easily, bending down the middle.

“You really think I didn’t think about that in the, oh, I don’t know, five fucking thousand years I spent waiting in the Raft?” he snarls angrily. “It was _all_ I thought about, Natasha! I had a hell of a lot of time to think of my fuck-ups and failures and everything I’ve done wrong! But you know what I realized? That whether I end up in this fucking prison thanks to this job, or China or Hawaii or fucking _Zimbabwe_ , I would never disappear. When Cap kicked down that door, I didn’t go dye my hair and pretend no one needed me! I called Laura! I came to you! I came to you, and you couldn’t even come to me!”

The words are like a beating, and although they hurt, Natasha takes them without changing her posture. “I was going to go back. To Laura.”

“ _Were_ you?” Clint eyes her. “Because when I called her after I got out of that damn prison, she had no idea where you were, and she didn’t even know you weren’t with me. She just assumed that maybe the person who she trusted to get my back would have come and at least tried to rescue me, especially when she was the one who got me captured in the first place.”

Natasha’s eyes burn. “I didn’t. That wasn’t….I didn’t do that. I never wanted that. I never even wanted to take sides.”

“But it happened,” Clint presses. “And now we have to deal with it. Because you went off the damn grid for too long, and you took this too far, and Laura doesn’t know any of the shit that went down inside either of our heads.”

“Laura hates me.”

Clint rubs his eyes. “No, she doesn’t. But, she is hurting.”

“Because of me.” Natasha tries to smile. “You know, I thought that the worst thing I could do was show her who I really was...the person who grew up in the Red Room and who was made of violence and knives and everything that she didn’t understand. But I showed her who I was when I didn’t help you. When I forgot that I had a responsibility to her, and only thought of myself.”

“You didn’t, though,” Clint offers, walking to the cupboard. He opens it and sticks his head inside, emerging with a full bottle of Gentleman Jack. “You were trying to save us. You were trying to keep us together, when no one else wanted to do the work.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing,” Natasha says, feeling defeated. “It was the wrong thing to do. We’re never going to be like that again. Not even the happy go-lucky team we were so many years ago, just...any kind of team. Not after all of this. And SHIELD falling, and now Steve and Tony…”

Clint lets her trail off and pours two fingers of whiskey into a small cup. “So is this the part where I ask you what you think we should do?”

Natasha watches the way his hands move, watches the curve of his back as he bends over to put the whiskey away and the way his fingers wrap around the glass; everything about him is so painfully familiar and so achingly comforting, even just him being here with her in the middle of nowhere. She wants to be alone, but she still feels so much better having him with her. She always has.

“No,” she says softly. “Because I don’t have an answer to that.”

“Well.” Clint inclines his head to one side, and downs his drink in one large gulp, a perfect imitation of Laura and her morning coffee. “I guess you have to go figure this out, don’t you?”

 

***

 

Laura’s just put Cooper and Lila to sleep when a soft knock at the door makes her jump.

Nate starts fussing and starts to cry, startled out of his dozing state by Laura’s actions, and Laura curses silently while attempting to soothe him.

“It’s okay, baby...it’s okay,” she murmurs as she walks downstairs, casting a quick glance at both bedrooms to make sure no one else has been disturbed. The knocking comes again as she reaches the landing, and she can see a tall, study profile on the other side of the door. Laura suspects it’s slightly familiar, but she can’t place it.

She puts Nate down in his bouncer so she can have her hands free in case she needs to pull out some form of self-defense, and opens the door a crack.

“What the _hell_ are you doing here?”

She doesn’t know whether she feels relieved or angry to see Tony Stark on the other side of the door, hands shoved into his pockets like a little kid. He looks up and squints as the porch light flicks on above him.

“Can I come in? Please, Mrs. Barton?”

On one hand, Laura doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being kind, even though Clint’s phone call had alleviated some of her fears. But he still wasn’t home, and she was still scared, and she still had next to no idea where he had been taken and why he couldn’t come back. There’s only a pea-sized light of knowledge in the darkness she’s living in and she hates it, so right now, she’s mostly angry at anyone who was involved in this whole mess.

Including Natasha.

Including the man now standing in her living room.

“Call me Laura,” she says by way of offering some kind of acceptance, and Tony forces out a smile.

“Okay. Laura. Uh...thanks for not closing the door on me.”

Laura snorts out a laugh and turns on the hallway light. “It wasn’t easy.”

Tony looks pained. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve talked to some people and we’ve put security detail on you and the farm, just in case. I wanted you to know that you were safe, and I wanted you to hear it from me.”

“Oh, so are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Laura asks mildly. “Because the two people I expected to be honest with me are being pretty cagey.”

Tony hesitates. “Maybe. Got any alcohol to go with my story?”

As angry as she still is, she finds herself smiling, and leaves Nate sitting in his bouncer while she walks into the kitchen. Laura takes out a bottle of Smirnoff and pours two shots into a small glass.

“If I say I’m saving the good stuff until Clint gets home, do you mind having the shitty stuff?”

Tony smiles back. “Seems only fair. I didn’t mean for this to happen, by the way.”

“What did you not mean to have happen, Tony?” Laura asks, setting the glass down in front of him. “Us being in danger? Or my husband and the father of my children not being able to come home?”

Tony grimaces. “Both,” he says, looking down at his glass. “I didn’t ask Cap to call Clint. I didn’t know things would go down like this, and that’d they’d put him in --”

“Tony.”

“Laura, you’re not going to like this.”

Laura downs the drink she’s poured and reaches for the bottle again. “Clint called me. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he’s out and he’s alive. But he wouldn’t tell me what happened and _why_ he couldn’t come home. So if you don’t tell me, someone will. And as much as I don’t like you right now, I’d rather hear it from you than hear it on the news.”

“I don’t know why, but I kind of appreciate that,” Tony says, running his finger over the rim of his glass. “He was taken to The Raft. It’s, uh. It’s a supermax prison, basically. It’s --”

“I know The Raft,” Laura interrupts, a chill running through her bones. “Clint told me about it. It’s where they put criminals and murders. Psychopaths like The Abomination.” She pauses to make sure she’s remembering correctly, allowing Tony the chance to correct her on the hopeful off-chance she’s wrong. “They put Clint in _there_? A place made for psychopathic criminals?”

“Kept him away from the crazies, as far as I know,” Tony says. “Little comfort, probably. But that’s also why I wanted to tell you we were looking out for you.” He stops and takes a breath. “I, uh...I may have said some stuff to Barton when I visited them.”

“You told someone about us,” Laura says coldly, not even bothering to read between the lines of Tony’s botched confession. Suddenly, she wants to take the drink and throw it in his face, and maybe use the shards of the glass to dig out some blood.

“I got angry,” Tony admits. “I got angry at Barton, at Natasha, and I said some stuff I didn’t mean. Stuff that I know hurt them, and maybe hurt the people they cared about. My judgement was clouded. My best friend had just been paralyzed...I didn’t even know if he would walk again.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Laura replies, trying to keep her voice down for the sake of her kids.

Tony nods. “I know it’s not. So I’m sorry. I’m not saying this is my way of making it up to you, because I know that’s not fair either, but I’m taking care of you. I’m making sure you’re not in trouble.”

Laura tries to figure out what to say, because there are too many things swirling inside her head. Nate babbles happily, amused by his own actions and entirely unconcerned with the very adult conversation happening.

“Why did you come here?” she asks, settling on the question she thinks might actually make her feel better about this whole thing. “You could’ve just called.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, finally drinking. “I could have. But Natasha called me and asked me to help you, and I realized I couldn’t sit there and let you think I had no involvement in this. I’m sorry, Laura.”

At the mention of Natasha, Laura’s throat tightens, and she wills her emotions to stay below the surface. She had been so angry, _so_ angry and upset when Natasha had waltzed through the door, owning up to the fact she had played a role in this whole thing and didn’t do anything to help. Laura had pushed her away but Natasha didn’t have to stay away -- that was her decision, that was _her_ choice, to stay away from the family she had chosen to protect and give her commitment to as a friend, the _only_ friend from Clint’s life Laura has ever let in.

It’s not enough, knowing that her actions had been stoked by someone else’s words, but it does make things a little more clear. The darkness of Laura’s knowledge has been pulled back enough that there’s more light now, and she can breathe a little easier, and she’s a little less scared of the dark.

“Thank you,” she says. Tony leans back in the chair and raises his glass, and Laura notices his eyes and his face look tired, as if he’s aged a million years in just a few weeks.

“You’re welcome.”

 

***

 

The beach at Santa Marinella has a wide stretch of sand and clear water that slaps against the pebbled earth. Natasha sits on the lip of the small drop-off where the water swims lazily underneath her, and puts her head on Clint’s shoulder. It’s been so long since she’s been able to do that, to have that comfort that she so desperately craves in the wake of being completely alone and violated and hurt.

“So when are you going home?”

Natasha straightens up, and reaches for the coffee she’d bought a few hours earlier. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? This is your family.”

“It’s your family too,” Clint says matter-of-factly. “But I already called and said I can’t. Not for awhile, at least.” He looks over and nods. “You can, though.”

“I can,” Natasha echoes softly, wondering how true that really is. “But she’ll hate me.”

Clint reaches for her hand and squeezes it softly. “Well, she might hate your hair. But I know she won’t hate _you_.”

Natasha smiles thinly. “You didn’t have to show up and stand in the living room and tell your wife that you didn’t know where her husband was...and you didn’t have to admit that you were the cause of him being taken.”

“Is that what you think?” Clint fingers the strands of her hair, blonde slipping through his fingers. “Just because you chose a side against me? Natasha, come on. This is bigger than you.”

“It’s easy to say that,” Natasha says, pulling her legs up. “But that’s not what Laura sees. She doesn’t think like we do. She only sees betrayal. She only sees how I didn’t protect you. How do you make up for that?”

“I don’t know if you can,” Clint says with uncertainty. “But it’s not any different than when I have to miss Cooper’s birthday. Or when I don’t get home in time to tuck Lila into bed. Or when I miss Nate’s first steps because I had to run off and couldn’t not shoot my bow.” He reaches over her as he talks, picking up a pebble, twirling it easily between his fingers. “She knows it’s important. She knows it’s work. But does she understand? Not really. I know that, though. I know she can love me like hell and tell me she gets it and give me the respect to make my own decisions, but she’ll never see it the same way. I’ve learned to live with that.”

“You’ve had years of living with that,” Natasha points out, unable to keep the anger from her voice. “And she’s always known you as someone who loved her. She knew you before this whole SHIELD mess. She’s always seen me as something else, and I’ve messed that up with this.”

“You know what I think?” Clint asks, flinging the rock at the water. “I think this Natasha, the one who runs and fights and is always in motion, who throws herself into dangerous situations just to redeem herself and prove her love...that’s you. That’s why you’re running and that’s why you haven’t come home. You don’t feel like you’ve earned the right to come home because you haven’t proven anything yet. You need to think about how Laura sees that.”

“I _have_ ,” Natasha protests sharply. Clint raises an eyebrow.

“You have?”

“I know I left her,” Natasha says, rocking up and standing over him. “I know she thinks I ran away, that I wasn’t being responsible. What else do I have to think about?”

“Think about who she is,” Clint urges, more gently than she thinks she deserves for this conversation, because she’s aware that she’s being overly stubborn. “She doesn’t value relationships that work like barter. She trusts when she needs to trust...and loves _because_ she trusts. Find that balance with her, and understand what she needs from you. She will forgive you, Nat. I swear.”

It feels so strange to be having this conversation, because she keeps thinking they’re still on borrowed time -- she supposes they are, in a way; Clint couldn’t come home and nothing was back to normal, Tony was trying to figure out how to run a goddamn superhero team on his own with nothing but a bankroll and a few stray agents, Steve was off the grid for the time being and no one knew where Wanda was, though Clint had assured her that she was safe. At the same time, the conversation and situation feel familiar, like they’ve had it before -- sitting in a public space where no one really knew who they were, hiding out in safehouses, talking about things they could only say to each other when they were really alone and their guards could be pulled down entirely.

“Clint?”

“Hmmm?”

Natasha sits back down, curling against him. “You said she’ll never understand this. Don’t you ever feel like you’re missing something, if Laura can’t understand that part of your life?”

“Not really.” Clint shrugs and gives her a crooked smile. “That’s why I’ve got you.”

Tears spring to the corner of Natasha’s eyes and she fights to hold them back; she can’t cry here openly in front of him. Instead, she stays silent, breathing deeply and trying to figure out what she can say that doesn’t sound either emotional or pathetic.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she says, even though she knows that’s not entirely true. She was there. She was standing across from him, watching him fight. She even hit him multiple times. But it was like Laura had said -- she was there, but she hadn’t been _there_. Not the way she was supposed to be, anyway.

“Yeah,” he says as he circles his arm around her shoulders. She finds herself thinking of vineyards and broken promises, nights spent in the med bay fueled only by coffee, stupid dumb jokes under the stars, greasy take-out and cheap beer and baseball games where she got to experience the joy of being a kid, just for once, because he cared.

“I’m sorry, too.”

 

***

 

_Natasha,_

_I know why you’re staying away, but I hope you’re safe. It’s quiet here without you, and without Clint. I --_

Laura crumples up the paper and throws it across the room, where it joins a large pile of wadded up writing. Nathaniel, who has been sitting next to Laura playing with some plastic cups, delightedly crawls across the study floor to assess the newest distraction.

It’s frustrating to Laura that she can’t find words for this particular situation, because words always came easily when talking to Clint or Natasha. Sometimes there were words that were too harsh, or things that she couldn’t figure out how to articulate, but for the most part, she knew _how_ to talk to the people she cared about -- and she knew how to do it well. But Laura has been trying to write this goddamn letter for three days, and all she’s gotten for her trouble is a bunch of wasted trees. And Clint or Natasha are no closer to coming home than they were when Natasha broke into the house and told Laura her husband was in trouble.

She knew why Clint couldn’t come home -- she understood, the same way she’d understood his situation for years; she knew sometimes there were things that just needed to be done to keep them safe, and staying away longer than necessary was one of them. It still hurt -- it always would -- but at least it’s not an entirely new thing for her to grapple with.

She had broken a little bit of protocol and called Nick on his untraceable number, if only so she could confirm what Tony had told her. Unfortunately, she had failed to realize Nick was so off the grid that all he could offer was confirmation of Clint’s capture and the fact that he was working behind the scenes to make sure this all got taken care of. (He did take the opportunity during the call to ask about apple pie, though, and so Laura had been roped into promising she’d make one if he visited before Cooper’s next birthday.)

Laura glances at her watch, frowning slightly. Less than an hour until the kids got home from school, which meant Nathaniel was due for some kind of walk to tire him out, because Laura knows examining crumpled-up paper isn’t going to cut it. She picks up her son from the floor, decides against changing him since he’ll just ruin another outfit anyway, and straps him into the stroller sitting on the front porch. Locking the house behind her, she sets off towards one of the trails, clear sky above her and weeds kicking at her bare ankles.

The barn at the corner of their property belongs to them -- it had come with the house, but the previous owners had left it as a set piece more than anything else. Clint had spent countless spare minutes and late nights refurbishing the place so it could be used as a storage unit and later, as a training center of sorts. Laura stares at it, trying to remember the good parts of all of this.

Standing in this very spot of weeds, barely pregnant, sipping iced tea while watching Clint climb the roof with no shirt. Yelling that he’s going to get sunburned, him yelling back that she should stop being a mom before she even gave birth. Standing here with Lila in her arms while Clint helps Cooper paint part of the outside walls, concentration and care knitted into his face as he watches and guides his son. Standing here with Clint and holding his hand while they both watch Natasha take her frustration and anger out on one of the walls, and wondering what the world had done to make a young girl so terribly angry about living.

Standing here with Natasha while she was told that Clint had been compromised, and that they didn’t know where he was -- only that they knew he was alive, but even that was nothing more than a strong hope.

“It looks the same,” says a voice from behind her.

“It’s just a facade,” Laura replies, moving the stroller back and forth carefully in place. “There’s more change than you can see.”

Natasha steps up so that she’s in Laura’s peripheral vision, rather than behind her. “Clint told me you wouldn’t hate me.”

“Well, he’s right,” Laura says, finally turning to look at her. “I don’t hate you.” She pauses, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. “But I do hate your hair.”

Natasha barks out a laugh. “Clint said you’d say that, too.”

Laura waits for Natasha to say something else, because she’s not sure how to facilitate this conversation. There are things she _should_ ask -- where did Natasha go, how did she get here, where did Clint find her and why could he go to _her_ but not ask Laura to meet him someplace obviously secret? Why the hell did she dye her hair _blonde_? But there are things Laura feels Natasha should ask too, and truthfully, she wants those questions first.

“How was your trip?” she asks. Natasha gives her a strange look, but shrugs.

“It was fine. I had some time to think.” She takes off her sunglasses, letting them fall into the grass, and rubs her eyes. “Clint can’t come home.”

“I know.” Laura smiles sadly. “He called, from...from wherever he is right now. He told me he couldn’t come home.”

Natasha turns around, blonde strands flinging backwards from her face as the wind picks up. “I’m sorry. I know this is bigger than what happened between me and Clint, but I’m sorry for staying away.”

There’s a part of Laura that wants to do nothing but hug her, but she needs to play this delicately with her emotions, because it’s been too long and this is too complicated. “Why didn’t you come back?”

“I…” Natasha’s gaze finds the ground. “I guess I felt like I hadn’t earned the right to come back,” she says slowly, and Laura bites down on a quiet, angry sob. Part of her is frustrated, because they had talked about this -- they were _past_ this -- and the other part of her is realizing just how much distance other than physical distance has spread between them, given how Natasha can’t even seem to meet her eyes in her admission.

“Natasha.”

Natasha looks up, and Laura tries to find a familiar shred of someone she cares about in her haunted gaze.

“Natasha, remember what I told you?”

Natasha nods. “Love isn’t earned.”

“It’s not. But I do think there’s value in how other people see you, and what you expect from them based that,” Laura continues, as Nathaniel coos softly from his stroller. “Clint sees you as someone he can share things with -- things that I don’t understand. I know that, and I don’t resent it, because I’ve accepted it. Tony sees you as someone who can’t let go of how she was made, just like him.”

“And who do you see me as?” Natasha asks carefully. “Someone who deserts her best friend and chooses an opposite side so publicly that he ends up in a prison, and she walks free?”

“I don’t have an answer to that,” Laura admits. “But I do know you’re someone I trust, no matter what you tell me, or what the world tells me. We all make mistakes.”

Laura waits. She waits because she’s done this so many times, she’s stood in front of Natasha expecting a reaction and she’s stood in front of Clint demanding a response. The difference is, usually there’s not an ocean between them where they’re so far out of their depth that they feel like they’re drowning in the waves as they try to bridge the gap and come together again.

“So what happens next?”

“Next?” Laura echoes.

“The next time Clint leaves in the middle of the night,” Natasha elaborates. “The next time I do something that makes you angry. The next big thing...the next mission. The next time we have to go against something that’s even worse than Ultron or the Accords.”

Laura stares at the barn, and thinks of all the work that’s gone into it to make it a place that feels somewhat like a home -- she thinks of all the times Clint had wanted to quit, the moments Laura knew were less about home improvement and more about the Avengers, and she thinks of all the times they worked through those moments, coming out on the other side so that he could return to the fight -- to Natasha. To his team.

All the moments Clint disappeared for weeks on end because he just couldn’t put down his bow, and just he couldn’t retire -- all the moments Laura had expressed her disappointment at another missed birthday, or another missed appointment, or another missed family dinner.

All the moments Natasha had stepped in when she could, because maybe Clint couldn’t quit, but Natasha knew how important it was to let the people in his life know they hadn’t been totally abandoned.

Like the barn that stands in front of them, something that had started out broken, but was now whole, built with careful, hard-won love.

“I don’t know,” she says softly. “But I’m willing to try to figure it out, if you are.”

Natasha takes a deep breath, and her exhale is like a gunshot of emotion in the afternoon wind. “Yeah. I think I am.”

Laura reaches out, taking Natasha’s hand. Natasha’s fingers are stiff and firm, and Laura understands why -- it’s a gesture she couldn’t extend when she first came home, because she was too angry. Because she was too upset. Because she couldn’t try to forgive when she was dealing with so many things that seemed unfair, and at the time, it had been easier to blame Natasha for all of them, rather than blaming herself or blaming Clint, who ran off because he couldn’t put down his goddamn bow when it was supposed to matter.

Natasha grips her fingers after a moment, firm metal bending into a supple boneless squeeze, a reconciliation long awaited and understood even without the accompaniment of words.

**Author's Note:**

> The end of this story was inspired by the aesthetics of [this tumblr post.](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com/post/163752822007/mohtz-so-i-dont-know-where-tf-my-art-is-headed)
> 
> Come find me on tumblr @isjustprogress for fic and more.


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